Expect Comcast to insist on Phillies changes

If the front office and baseball administration hierarchy of the Phillies organization has any fear of a major upheaval following the team's second straight 73-win season, that fear certainly won't be realized at the hands of acting president Pat Gillick, a baseball lifer so comfortable riding the ebb and flood of the game's tides that he earned the nickname Stand Pat.

And as much as fans might hope otherwise, there is also no indication that someone from the ownership group - cigar heir John Middleton is always optimistically suggested as a possibility - will march into Citizens Bank Park and demand quicker action than the franchise has traditionally displayed.

The Phillies, for better or worse, and their history holds much more of the latter, turn the course of this ship deliberately if at all, one degree at a time, two only if a full gale is blowing. That was the way of the Carpenter family and it has remained so under the patrician stewardship of both Bill Giles and David Montgomery. People keep their jobs, loyalty is rewarded, family is paramount. For the most part, that steady ride has always been fine with a well-feathered ownership group that dozed chin on chest in the library, the standings page lying forgotten on the floor.

Gillick has already said Ruben Amaro Jr. will return as the team's general manager in 2015, and he has mostly absolved Amaro for its current plight. Blaming the GM for keeping together a winning core and then having to live with the inevitable aging process would be like blaming the dinosaurs for not dodging the glaciers. These things happen.

Left to their own devices, the franchise's leaders would probably be content to wait until the contracts that currently restrict them have expired and then get serious about a rebuilding. In the meantime, perhaps the farm system could produce a prospect or two. That would be a welcome change as well.

There is another player at the table these days, however, and any hope for more dramatic action rests with the guy who bought a major stake in the game back in January. Father Comcast, which secured the television rights to the Phillies for 25 years and $2.5 billion, is not renowned for his patience.

Perhaps the team can accept the downturns since 2011 as the natural biorhythms of the business - including the 600,000 fewer customers who showed up this season compared with the joyride of 2013 - but Comcast is all about the numbers. Even if the changes have to be cosmetic as much as substantive, there's plenty of room for makeup in the world of television.

Comcast has passed along its costs to the consumer, slapping surcharges on the cable operators who carry their Phillies telecasts, but that doesn't make the ratings any better, or the near-term future any brighter. The team needs to start winning again, or at least give the public something engaging to watch in the interim.

Before the season that just concluded, Comcast cleared its throat by having Chris Wheeler and Gary Matthews removed from the television broadcast team, bringing in the tag team of Jamie Moyer and Matt Stairs, along with special Sunday appearances by Mike Schmidt.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion of on-air talent, but to say that the broadcasts were appreciably better would be a stretch. They were different, and sometimes that is the same as being better to the television folks. Ratings down? Let's build a new set!

It's also difficult to judge the new crew since it essentially had the job of making a car wreck seem entertaining and palatable. While the Titanic was sinking and the band kept playing, did anyone really notice if the string section was out of tune and the horns were flat? Probably not.

Ditching Wheels and Sarge is small potatoes, however, compared to prying Amaro out of his job or persuading the front office to eat $60 million worth of Ryan Howard's remaining contract. We'll see how it goes, but expect Comcast to insist on something to give fans a reason to watch before next April.

In any case, the dismissal of amateur scouting director Marti Wolever was not the first shoe to fall in that process. As much as anything, Wolever was fired because he embarrassed the organization earlier this year by dropping a dime on two draft picks whom, upon the advice of agents they weren't supposed to have, decided not to sign with the Phils for what was being offered.

This stuff goes on all the time and major-league teams just suck it up and move on. Not Wolever, who reported them, the team's fifth- and sixth-round picks, for heaven's sake, to the NCAA. One kid was suspended 11 games, the other was cleared, and the Phillies looked like bullies who are no better at judging what players will do before they reach the field than they are at judging what they will do upon getting there.

Montgomery, according to those close to him, was livid, because the Phils can tolerate almost anything except bad manners. Not that the scouting department doesn't need an overhaul, and not that the farm system isn't an arid dust bowl, but that alone wasn't the main issue.

It should have been, though, and there are many other issues worth addressing. The new guy at the table, the one with the nice suits and a daub of shoe polish at the temples, has noticed those, too. His money is already in the pot, and it will be fascinating to see what game he chooses to call.

@bobfordsports